Local to London champion is boxing clever

Innovative packaging for food in transit cuts costs and waste by 20 percent. One of the South East's leading restaurant suppliers has been given the task of finding a greener way to transport fruit and vegetables to London.

Vernon Mascarenhas has been appointed the Local to London Champion by the South East of England's Sustainable Food and Farming Strategy Board. He will use £20,000 of funding from the South East England Development Agency to investigate and introduce the use of collapsible plastic boxes for transporting produce from growers to restaurants across London.

"At the moment suppliers use cardboard boxes to send their produce to restaurants," says Vernon.

"After use these boxes are disposed of. This is not only costly in terms of the environment, but also for the business as each box costs more than 50 pence each. A collapsible box will cost 25 pence a month to rent."

Vernon calculates that switching to plastic reusable boxes will allow his company Secretts Farm to run four vans rather than five because they can be loaded more efficiently. The saving for a medium-sized restaurant from switching from cardboard to plastic boxes is £2,000 in reduced waste disposal costs. There should also be other savings through better use of staff and the need for less space to store boxes for collection.

Vernon supplies fresh fruit and vegetables from Secretts Farm at Milford near Guildford and from around 25 growers across the South East. A restaurant owner by profession, he started the business with partner TV food expert Greg Wallace in 2001.

"We now have hundreds of customers across London from Michelin- starred restaurants to local pubs. Over the season we supply more than 400 lines of fruit and veg," quotes Vernon.

Since starting the business the interest in locally produced food has grown with restaurants keen to highlight the provenance of the fruit and vegetables they use in their meals with customer concern growing over the environmental impact of imported food.

"The trend towards sourcing locally has meant there is much more direct supply from grower to restaurant so finding ways of doing that more efficiently is increasingly important."

Vernon is working with a number of restaurants of different sizes to introduce the new collapsible plastic boxes, developing a system and training to ensure their most effective use.

"The boxes will come with a barcode allowing us to charge a deposit and for the restaurant to know how many boxes it's using," explains Vernon.

"It is important that the system delivers benefits for the restaurants as well as us."

Commenting on Vernon's appointment as Local to London Champion Shaun Leavey, chairman on the South East's Sustainable Food and Farming Strategy Board says:

"We are fortunate to have secured someone with Vernon's extensive knowledge of food outlets in London - and the logistics of supplying them - to take on this challenging and technical project and share the lessons learnt from it."

Vernon's project will run until March of next year. He will share his findings with growers and restaurant owners and is looking for the views of those looking to improve food supplies to London, particularly in relation to the Olympics.

To contact Vernon Mascarenhas call: 01483 520510 or 07966 400961.